David Levinthal

In 1972, David Levinthal photographed a package worth of toy Nazi soldiers posed on the floor of his parents’ home. Soon thereafter he was collaborating with fellow classmate and future Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, as the two staged and documented their recreation of the Germans’ 1941 invasion of Russia. This experiment not only turned into a series of exhibitions and the 1977 book Hitler Moves East, but also set the stage for a career creating photographs that use toy figures to explore iconic imagery.

Levinthal also made a small series with cowboy figures in 1972, though it was all but forgotten when he purchased a new set of Britains cowboy figures in 1985. The Wild West series, begun in 1986, does not seek to depict the historic American West but rather takes root in Levinthal’s memories of playing cowboys and Indians as a child, staging re-enactments with old west toys, watching TV shows like Gunsmoke, and attending countless B-movie matinees. Using toy figures meticulously re-painted by Levinthal himself, the series reconstructs an iconic West through what he remembers of those childhood representations (which were themselves interpretations of the past). Each of Levinthal’s series has a distinctive palette, and The Wild West scenes are done in a warm amber tint. The very shallow depth of field used in this series confuses the blur of limited focus with the blur of motion as horses rear up on their back legs or carry their riders over brush and rocks. The effect also suggests the haze of memory, though the saturation of color maintains an emotional intensity.

http://archive.mocp.org/collections/permanent/levinthal_david.php

Toys are, by definition, objects of play. In the hands of photographer David Levinthal, however, these objects of play play with our objectivity. He turns the innocence of toys upside down, using tiny figurines to create lurid scenes, some of which are vaguely menacing, some of which are painfully touching, some of which are horrific, some of which are deeply disturbing. The fact that he uses toys to do this is makes Levinthal’s photographs both absurd and strangely absorbing.

Levinthal has continued to create work that offended many, inspired some, and earned him a reputation for controversy. He photographed racist cultural artifacts (lawn jockeys, “Mammy” cookie jars, Little Black Sambo figures), Barbie dolls, shunga netsuke (sexualize Japanese miniatures), Jesus. But though some of his series have generated controversy, none of his recent work has achieved the same critical acclaim as his early studies of figurines.

Is it art? Is it good art? Is it meaningful art? I’m not sure it matters. I admire the audacity of using small scale figures to explore large scale events, of using toys to examine topics that are not amusing, of turning the trivial to the service of the serious. While his work is too self-consciously tuned to irony to be truly ironic.

http://www.utata.org/sundaysalon/david-levinthal/